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Last night, President Obama outlined his budget plan in a non-State-of-the-Union speech before a joint session of Congress. It was pretty great to see him on the rostrum in the House chamber, and his speech was full of the usual Obama soaring rhetoric and potentially unfulfillable promises like curing..

Last night, President Obama outlined his budget plan in a non-State-of-the-Union speech before a joint session of Congress. It was pretty great to see him on the rostrum in the House chamber, and his speech was full of the usual Obama soaring rhetoric and potentially unfulfillable promises like curing cancer. But, high marks overall.The fun part came when the Republicans delivered the traditional response. You remember last year's State of the Union, when Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius delivered the response; it might have been one of the most boring speeches in history and I'm pretty sure didn't help her cause to be the vice presidential nominee. This year, it fell to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, one of the non-Palin rising stars of the Republican party (Indian! Southern! Catholic! Ivy League!). He botched it. Badly. You can watch it here:

Putting aside ideological complaints (such as that this doesn't really seem like the right time to be breaking out the whole "federal government is evil" argument, when it seems pretty clear to everyone that the federal government is the only entity capable of making any headway on the economy), Jindal was just flat, hokey, and uncompelling. And I'm not the first person to say it, but his style of speech and corn pone lines reminded me a lot of a certain NBC page on 30 Rock. Especially when you watch this video with all the funny sentences edited together (courtesy of MyDD):[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAXvnJ972REI know you're trying to do this whole man of the people populism thing, Bobby. But come on. We all know you went to Brown.